Chuck Sweeny: Executive orders and letting go of Water Street ramp

I like the idea kicking around City Hall to bulldoze Rockford's ugliest parking ramp, at the corner of East State and Water streets in the old downtown.

It's a two-story affair with the bottom floor below street level. It's damp and creepy down there. I had to park there when the press building was being built, and I had my license plate sticker stolen - twice. In the daytime.

I would never park there at night - too many places for mopes to lurk.

The city says it would cost about $750,000 to fix the crumbling ramp, but in the long run it's cheaper and more productive to install a nicely landscaped surface lot there. The 104-space lot is mostly empty; the city leases 29 spaces. A surface lot of 60 spaces would do nicely.

Also, an attractive surface lot with shade trees would be a much more efficient space for the wildly successful Rockford City Market, a Friday afternoon and early-evening attraction from late spring though early autumn. The city could add electric outlets for market vendors, special lights and other fancy fixtures to make the market look special.

You might protest: "But what about the little building that used to be Water Street Cafe?" It's been vacant for years. It's too small to make any money and, remember, it was designed to be a small gas station. That's right, gas pumps were in front of it.

In the years before the parking ramp was built, the corner of State and Water was occupied by Mick's Mobil, a full service gas station. (Hey, kids! Ask grandpa about service stations. Ding!)

It's unlikely that either a cafe or a gas station will be returning to State and Water. So, aldermen, to paraphrase the great Ronald Reagan, "Tear down this ramp," and replace it with space we can use - one that is not scary and ugly.

Act quickly, otherwise FOUR (Friends Of Ugly Ramp) will have it declared a hysterically historic site.

Executive order: To hear tea-party Republicans talk, President Barack Obama has usurped the Constitution and become the northern equivalent of Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan dictator. Reason? Obama uses executive orders too much, when he should be going to Congress for approval.

"Even if you happen to agree with him on policy matters, the precedent of the president picking and choosing what laws to follow is a dangerous precedent," U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told CNN after the president's State of the Union speech Tuesday.

It's true, the president has threatened to go around Congress when he can, to enact policies Congress won't pass. He can only do this to a limited extent with executive orders, which aren't laws and can be nullified by future presidents.

In his speech, Obama said he will order federal contractors to pay workers at least $10 an hour, but he can't order all U.S. employers to do that. He used an executive order to allow openly gay people to serve in the military, but he's the commander in chief. He reversed President Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" order, which allowed gays to serve only if they stayed in the closet.

President Harry Truman, a Democrat, ordered the military to integrate; earlier, President Woodrow Wilson, also a Democrat, used his executive power to expand segregation in federal departments and the military.

But has Obama issued more executive orders than other modern presidents? No. He's a piker, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara:

Obama has issued 168 executive orders in five years. George W. Bush issued 291 in his eight years; Bill Clinton, 364; George H.W. Bush, 166 in four years.

Abraham Lincoln issued 48 executive orders, but among them was the biggest of all: The Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln also used his executive authority to suspend the constitutional right of Americans to a writ of habeas corpus, which requires authorities to bring a prisoner or other detainee to a judge to decide whether the detention or imprisonment is legal.